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Raoul Silva
Tiago Rodriguez (who goes by the alias Raoul Silva) is the main villain of the 2012 Bond film Skyfall. Silva is a former MI6 operative turned cyber-terrorist who is hellbent on seeking revenge against those he holds responsible for allowing him to be captured by the Chinese government while conducting unsanctioned operations in Hong Kong, most notably M. He was portrayed by Javier Bardem. It is discovered in the sequel film ''SPECTRE'', that Silva was a member of SPECTRE and his attacks against James Bond, M and MI6 was motivated by SPECTRE and Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Film biography Background Raoul Silva is of Spanish descent, and was born Tiago Rodriguez. Little is known about Silva's early life. He did mention that he spent time with his Rich Grandmother on an island and she taught him how to capture rats in Oil Drums. During his years in MI6, Silva had worked alongside M in Hong Kong from 1986 to 1997. Before Bond became an Mi6 member it is speculated that Silva might've possibly been the original 007 before him. M, who was section chief at the time, noticed that the operative had engaged in unauthorized hacking of the Chinese. Whilst she was overseeing the transition in Hong Kong from a British colony to a special administrative region during the transfer of Sovereignity she sold out Silva in exchange for prisoners held by the Communist Chinese government. During his capture, torture and imprisonment by the Chinese, Silva attempted to take his own life using a hydrogen cyanide implant in one of his molars. The suicide attempt failed, horrifically scarring Silva both mentally and physically. The botched attempt is shown to have severely damaged his upper jaw so his left cheek is sunken leaving him with a drooping eyelid bloodshot eyes and a slurred raspy speech. His Hispanic tan is replaced with a pale demeanour.He is also shown to have rotten decaying gums and all but a few teeth have melted away with the few remaining having been mutilated and deformed, requiring Silva to wear a prosthesis to replace the teeth and inflate his left cheek and also to presumably help him breath. The false teeth might have some sort of inhalers and Electrolanryx. When taken out his face is disfigured. Revenge Years later, he improves his hacking skills and rises in the criminal empire. He takes Severine under his wing but the merciful man she thought he was was a lie. it is impled that he rigged the 2011 national Uganda elections and recently crippled economies through Stock Exchanges. After he does this MI6 face a crisis when the mercenary Patrice steals a hard drive containing the identities of every NATO agent currently in the field, who were all embedded in terrorist organizations (SPECTRE) across the globe, and delivered it to Silva.(After this he is shown in the opening Sequence as a sillhoutte)Silva ensures that M is at the centre of the crisis by decrypting the drive using M's personal computer, via a hack, and sending her a message advising her to "think on her sins" before bombing her office (knowing that she isn't inside), bringing her under pressure from the government to resign. He then posts videos on YouTube of their names and threatens that he will persistently post five more every week. Later on as M meets with Mallory to discuss what to do with Raoul Silva they watch the news which shows agents being executed in an abandoned warehouse. (Later revealed to be Hashima Island) Despite the injuries he sustained on a botched mission to retrieve the drive from Patrice, and ignoring the poor results of his re-entry test, M dispatches James Bond to Shanghai after receiving a tip from the CIA about Patrice's next contract. Patrice has been assigned by Silva to kill an art critic. Though he is unsuccessful in learning Silva's identity after Patrice falls to his death from a skyscraper, Bond is able to locate Patrice's contact in a casino in Macau: Silva's mistress, Sévérine, who desperately asks that he kills Silva. Bond boards Sévérine's yacht at night, which departs to a remote island off the coast of Macau Hashima Island- a former chemical plant which Silva had taken for himself by issuing a false alarm declaring a major leak, prompting all of the workers to evacuate. On the island, Silva's men take Sévérine away and restrain Bond in a chair at the end of a long room filled with Silva's electronic equipment in his warehouse. Silva enters to confront Bond, revealing his former status as an MI6 operative and gruesomely comparing Bond and himself to two tortured rats as a result of M's deceptive nature. Taking Bond outside, Silva then has Sévérine tied to a collapsed statue, placing a small glass of alcohol on her head and forcing Bond to try to knock it off her head with a shot from an old single- shot flintlock pistol. Though Bond tries to spare her by aiming to her side, Silva then takes up his own pistol and shoots her instantly, causing the glass to fall from her head, but as he contemplates killing Bond, Bond is able to incapacitate all of his men with a startled Silva backing away with no shots left dropping his pistol. Before Silva has a chance to escape, helicopters that Bond signaled prior to arriving on the island finally arrive, and the team captures Silva. Captivity & escape Back in England, Silva is confined within MI6's underground emergency headquarters, which they had retreated to following the explosion in M's office. When M confronts him in his cell, he expresses his hatred for her after his capture by the Chinese and his failed suicide attempt, and his determination to bring about her downfall. When she is about to leave he shows her what the Suicide Pill did to him by removing his prosthetic dentures. A shocked disturbed remorseful M leaves in horror as Silva grins with a gaping jaw and laughs maniacally.Meanwhile, Q acquires Silva's computer and decrypts a complex algorithm on its drive, with the Password being Granborough which unlocks to form a detailed electronic map of underground London. In connecting Silva's computer to his own, Q inadvertently allows Silva to hack MI6's systems using a virus, releasing him from his cell and allowing him to escape into the subway through a floor grate. Realizing that Silva has always been one step ahead of them the whole time, his capture by MI6 and subsequent escape having been planned years in advance(SPECTRE might have had a hand in this), Bond deduces that he plans to travel along the subway and emerge at the scene of a public inquiry into M's actions regarding the stolen hard drive. Silva is successfully able to evade Bond at end of the chase by detonating an underground bomb that causes an incoming train to derail, almost crushing Bond. He then makes his way to the inquiry with a small number of henchmen, storming in and firing frantically at M but misses when Mallory takes the hit for her. He never manages to hit M, as he panics when Bond arrives kicking a gun to Eve Moneypenny where they both then flank him. His henchmen are then killed by Mallory who took a gun, shot one of them and then allowed James to notice a fire extinguisher which he then shot causing Silva to lose sight of M forcing him to retreat. Skyfall After Silva flees the scene, Bond takes M and leaves London, knowing that Silva and his men will come back in full force after his long-planned strategy failed him. Assigning Q to leave a complex electronic trail that only Silva will be able to follow, Bond takes M to Skyfall, his remote childhood home in Scotland, intending to lead Silva into a trap. With help from the house's gamekeeper, Kincade, Bond and M rig the house with a range of booby traps and explosives, and finish just as a wave of armed henchmen(possible SPECTRE soldiers) begins to approach from a hilltop. Though most of the henchmen are easily dispatched by the traps and by Bond and Kincade, one of them manages to wound M with a shot to the hip before being killed by Bond. Bond notices that Silva was not among the gunmen, and having already used all of the traps, he tells Kincade to evacuate M to the nearby chapel via a tunnel beneath the house. Night falls, and a second wave of men, including Silva, arrive in a helicopter. Silva strides out of the helicopter with his band of mercenaries and throws grenades into the mansion as he makes his way to the manor house. After throwing Grenades through windows and taunting Bond he circles the manor house and waves his arm to Bonds Car. The helicopter then shoots it and it blows up. Bond finds a pair of gas tanks and a stick of dynamite, timing them to explode after he escapes through the tunnel himself. Silva and his henchmen circle the house before it explodes, which manages to kill and incinerate the majority of the gunmen and causes the helicopter to crash with an angered and shocked Silva to look on in horror before being temporarily knocked out by the blast.(he is presumed by the audience to have been blown up) Death Silva gets up and looks at the blazing wreckage he is in. Looking across the moors, a crazed and determined Silva spots Kincade's flashlight as he escorts M towards the chapel, and stumbles after them. Bond emerges from the tunnel in pursuit, incapacitating one of Silva's two remaining henchmen by fly kicking him snapping his neck. He purposely falls through the frozen ice on a lake while fighting the other gunman, allowing Silva to reach the chapel and approach M while Kincade is coincidentally out of sight. Despite his hatred for her, he appears worried when he sees her bleeding wound, but nonetheless holds a gun to her head. When he struggles to execute her himself, he forces the gun into her hand, placing his head beside hers and demanding that she kill both him and herself with a single bullet through their heads. At this point Silvas Psyche seems to have shattered even more. Bond arrives at the last minute and hurls his father's old combat knife into Silva's back, declaring himself the "last rat standing" in reference to Silva's earlier speech. Silva collapses, dead. His scheme is still fulfilled even after death, as M collapses in Bond's arms and dies from her wound. Silva himself is presumably cremated after Mi6 recovers and M's funeral. Spectre '' Throughout ''Spectre, Silva is constantly mentioned. He appears in the Opening Sequence along with M Le Chiffre and Vesper Lynd. He appears in the shattered Glass almost ghost like. This either symbolising that Silva like M still haunts Bond and his past. He is also a member of SPECTRE and he collaborated with the organization by using his economy crippling and bomb detonating skills they also helped him carry out his scheme to bring down Mi6. He is also seen as a photograph in the Old MI6 building he attacked however his name is not shown on the Memorial Wall although M mentioned it to him in Skyfall. It is also unknown what happened to Hashima Island now that Silva doesn't own it. Personality Silva was highly charismatic, cunning, manipulative and a fully-fledged megalomaniac He has an odd quircky colourful and flamboyant personality but this is a mask to disguise how vile and cruel he really is. He seems to have a genius IQ.He was vengeful, as his master-plan was to murder M for giving him up to the Chinese a very long time ago. He was cynical, sly, malicious and very bitter since his country gave him up despite him being a highly brilliant field agent. He was an excellent cyberterrorist and strategist. He was emotional, as even when he was about to kill M he decided that she take both their lives because he was unable to take her life himself. Silva also tends to show no remorse, as proven by the courtroom shootout, whereby he proceeds to shoot one of his own henchmen when the fight dies down, yet he showed remorse when he saw the wound on M's hand. He unlike Le Chiffre and Greene was not worried for his own life and seemed to be quite the puppeteer himself. Despite his cunning and pragmatism, Silva was also notably bombastic - displaying a flair for theatrics with a dark sense of humor. During their initial meeting on his island, Silva relentlessly teased Bond and attempted to make him feel uncomfortable by coming onto him - only relenting when realizing that it was nothing new for Bond. Silva also seemed to like Classical Music.He liked listening to Boum by Charles Trenet because of his love for explosions. During his attack on Skyfall Lodge, he had outfitted his assault helicopter with nearly a dozen loudspeakers - solely for playing rock music during the attack (namely "Boom Boom", by The Animals ). As Bond put it, he "always had to make an entrance." Henchmen & Associates Patrice_(Ola_Rapace)_-_Profile.jpg|Patrice|link=Patrice (Ola Rapace) Severine - Profile.png|Sévérine|link=Sévérine (Berenice Marlohe) Behind the scenes Discussing his character prior to Skyfall's release, actor Javier Bardem described Raoul Silva as "more than a villain". His co-star, Daniel Craig stated that Bond has a "very important relationship" to Silva. In casting the role, director Sam Mendes admitted that he lobbied hard for Bardem to accept the part as Mendes recognised the potential for the character to be recognised as one of the most-memorable characters in the franchise and so wanted to create "something audience may consider to have been absent from the Bond movies for a long time". He felt that Bardem was one of the few actors up to the task of becoming "colourless" and existing within the world of the film as something more than a function of the plot, and so pushed hard for the actor to be cast. In preparing for the role, Bardem had the script translated into his native Spanish in order to better-understand his character, which Mendes cited as being a sign of the actor's commitment to the film. Bardem dyed his hair blond for the role after brainstorming ideas with Mendes to come up with a distinct visual look for the character. In Skyfall the movie has a number of messages about Old VS new and how people can change through trauma. One of these powerful messages is that although when he first appears to be a polite person when he takes out his dentures and his true appearance is shown combined with his revealed cruelty shows us that things aren't always what they seem. It should be noted that Tiago Rodriguez chose the name Raoul Silva because it is an anagram for A rival soul Also his message think on your sins is an anagram for your son is not in HK(Hong Kong). It could also be an acronym for T.O.Y.S. describing how M uses her agents like a child playing with toys... Until they Break Video Games: In 007 legends on the Skyfall DLC Patrice is shown but Silva isn't which was considered a major disappointment 'Parodies' Silva was parodied in the BAFTA awards played by David Walliams He meets Bond (played by Dermit O Leary) in Buckingham Palace.Silva gets a message from someone asking about Bond. After he finishes the conversation he presses a button blowing up a building outside. He then gives Bond a space suit and forces him to jump from space down to earth.He was also parodied in a Children of Maslenations sketch about Skyfall on Funny or Die. In another sketch Patton Oswalt plays a villain with a similar suit to Silva and also has Bond tied to a chair much like the scene in Skyfall. In this the villain plans to irradiate wheat and make Scarlett Johansson his wife. In the 2015 comedy movie SPY the main protagonist is tied to a chair by a woman named Rayna in a massive room which is reminiscent of the scene in Skyfall. Images Skyfall Silva Poster.jpg|Official Skyfall promotional poster featuring Bardem as Raoul Silva. Javierbardem.png|Silva in a prison cell after being captured by MI6. Bardem train.png|Silva on the London Underground Tube, disguised as a police officer. Skyfall - Silva confronts M in the Chapel.jpg|Silva confronts a wounded M in the estate's chapel. Videos Skyfall - Mind the Gap Skyfall (2012) - Interview: Javier Bardem Trivia * Bardem is the first Spanish actor ever to portray a Bond villian. *Originally, the Austrian actor Michael Pink was supposed to play Silva until Bardem got the role. Still Pink is seen as a henchman in the battle scenes at the end. *Silva is the second former MI6 agent (after Alec Trevelyan) to turn against MI6 and attempt to assassinate Bond. *He is the third villain in the reboot series named after a color (first two being Mr. White and Dominic Greene), although his name is not exactly the same as "silver". References Category:Film characters Category:Skyfall characters Category:Deceased characters Category:Characters killed by James Bond Category:Villains Category:Main villains Category:SPECTRE Agents